Broken Shards to Liquid Sands
by MinaRobins
Summary: They are both still deathly silent but with each rotation they make as they swirled around one another it caused the limits she had imposed on herself to unravel until a shriek of uproarious laughter summited past her grinning lips. AU: His Dark Materials. Daemons.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Broken Shards to Liquid Sands

**Author**: MinaRobins

**Fandom**: Once Upon a Time

**Pairing**: SwanQueen, Emma Swan/Regina Mills.

**Rating**: T

**Summary**: The clouds have blended and merged together to pelt down round, crystalline globes that darken Regina's dress and slicked her tresses smoothly against her dimpled cheeks. They are both still deathly silent but with each rotation they make as they swirled around one another it caused the limits she had imposed on herself to unravel until a shriek of uproarious laughter summited past her grinning lips. AU: His Dark Materials. Daemons.

…

She was supposed to be using this time to complete her assignments but she had finished everything earlier this morning when her riding instructor had been too ill to meet up. He was coming to an age when his bones were too weary for even light riding but he was a kind soul that Cora had been magnanimous enough to allow Regina to meet. Her trainer was once a race and hunts winner but if there was a true victor in life it would be the steady flowing pace of time.

For a small moment in today's schedule Regina was allowed to sequester away from her mother's watching gaze and just be. Regina complaisantly let her mind wander and unwind from the tension of putting up a constant performance. She mellowed out on the lofty chair and chased the trails of liquid that rolled down the glass planes of her bedroom window.

"Regina, we could go outside."

"We most certainly cannot, Galen," she turned her attention to the petite fluttering Berylline hummingbird by her shoulder, "when mother finds out we would be in a never-ending amount of trouble."

"Only _If_ she found out." Galen enticed with a sweet and excited twitter. She twirled towards the window, watched as the rain plittered and pattered, a spectator to nature rejuvenating the outside world.

"We are meant to be working." Regina countered but slid from the chair she was supposed to fit and made after her friend.

"I want to feel the chill." Galen answered, her chirp pitched higher than before as she made after every sliding droplet, an exciting a race as Regina would be able to take some part in. Horse riding was a show of nobility and not some bloody hunting sport and she was worth too much to risk on a silly game of speed.

"Galen…" Regina was hesitant but her friend was so excited and she was ashamed to find herself wanting this too. "Very well, but we'll have to be quiet."

"Of course!" The Daemon stridently trilled but then lowered herself closer to Regina's ear and amended in a controlled and hushed tone, "of course."

Regina could practically feel the vibrating joy in her companion's motions. She reached on her tip toes to turn the knob of her door, relieved that her mother had chosen to leave it unlocked. The open exit was probably a test of self-control and Regina was sure she had failed. She was upset at her lack of self-restraint but Galen's excited murmuring had her smiling soon again. The pair made as quiet mice down flights and flights of endless stairs. They utilized every tunnel they had seen others enter and escape from until they are freed into the courtyard.

The clouds have blended and merged together to pelt down round, crystalline globes that darken Regina's dress and slicked her tresses smoothly against her dimpled cheeks. They are both still deathly silent but with each rotation they make as they swirled around one another it caused the limits she had imposed on herself to unravel until a shriek of uproarious laughter summited past her grinning lips. Regina automatically covered her mouth with her hands, shamed once again by her unladylike antics. Galen was too animated to slow down though and she hovered and spun through the heavily precipitation, danced around the drops of rain and made the sprinkle of water for the falling arrows of enemy soldiers.

"Lady Regina!" Aida rushed down into the courtyard, her thin shoes immediately wet from the gathering puddles and the linen for the royal bed dragged behind her. The sheet was opened up and used to shield her young mistress from nature's dripping icy touch. Aida's Daemon poked out its whiskered head with equal concern, the mongoose was beyond itself in its anxiety. "What in the world do you think you're doing, think of what would happen if your mother found out!"

The lightness of the moment evaporated, both Regina and Galen slowing to an absolute halt. Everything ended with the approach of Cora and it was not so much a threat but a statement of reality. Regina bit her lip and watched Aida with touched and cautious affection, the young woman was once again breaking a rule for her and she knew it. Any misdemeanor was to be reported to Cora, a mother was meant to deal with her child, and the help had no right.

Tears mixed into the solution of wetness that gleamed on Regina's face and it was Aida's warm hands that wiped them away, "we don't have time for that now, come we have to go inside."

Even if Aida would not speak a single word of this incident to the Cora, it did not exclude the possibility of others who would flock to spread the news to the Queen. It was fickle favour at the best but something was better than nothing and if a small mercy could be given with the remembrance of this shared occurrence then people would collect for themselves instead of protecting the offspring form the Queen's wrath.

Galen has her head hung down while Regina refused to look away, she owed so much to Aida and she had once again endangered her friend with another careless impulse, "I'm sorry!"

"Shhhh, it's alright, come along." Aida motioned for the still opened doors and the group swiftly headed back towards the palace.

"Wait!" Galen fluttered a half circle around Aida and Regina. She shook with happiness as the clouds were heaved away by gusts of strong pushing winds. The powered blue skies were opened up to reveal the iridescent shimmer of a forming rainbow.

"Wow," Regina gripped Aida's dress in her tiny fists and beheld with opened mouth pleasure at the seemingly vast and endless world around her.

"Oh, Regina," Aida's heart pained to see her gentle charge be so enamored by a something as simple and freeing as a natural phenomenon. "Just a moment more, then."

"That, would still be a moment too many," Cora's voice was composed but there was the clear harsh sensation of steel in her words, "I'm _very_ disappointed but I suppose that is the nature of motherhood."

Regina scrambled herself away from Aida; quick to hide her hand behind her back as if it would change the fact that her mother saw who she had approached with such easy intimacy. Galen became slopping wet as she plummeted in fright at the appearance of Cora.

Her little body skittishly morphed to that of a hare's which hopped into an inelegantly screeching feline before trembling into her Indian Peafowl form to match Cora's Daemon. Galen couldn't ever compare to the majestically vibrant Daemon that stalked at Cora's side. Augustus was male and had the proud characteristics that accentuated Cora's high status while Galen's dimorphism meant she was toned in muted shades. Galen's ruddy bronzed ashen feathers drooped heavily with rain.

Augustus twitched in agitation, his vivid tail feathers held high and away from the slippery cobbled walk way. If peacocks were physically able to mimic a human's facial sneer then Augustus would have hat skill in spades. "How dreadful." he intoned even though the clouds had passed to give a show of brilliant shades.

"Is there," Cora started as she tracked toward Aida, her lips pressed together in displeasure, "or is there not a rule that servants must follow regarding _my_ only daughter?"

"There is, mistress!" Aida fell down onto her knees, careless of the rocks that sat jagged and cutting beneath her bony joints or of the cold that seeped through the layers of her uniform.

"Then will you tell me why you thought it was so prudent to cater to my daughter's whims," Cora held her hand over the soaking cloth, not quit touching the material, "to soil the linens that cost more than your wages in a year?"

Aida's mongoose dropped to a curl in the woman's lap while Augustus haughtily gazed down at the diminutive little creature; the stare was enough to stall the hiss that had begun to froth up in the younger Daemon's throat.

"Mother, please, it's my faul-" Cora wrapped her hand over Regina's mouth and something crazy and barely contained stirred in her eyes. The familiarity of the dangerous intent in her mother's eyes caused Regina to immediately still.

"It's certainly not the fault of royalty," Cora taught with vehemence in her words, "the blame falls on the ineptitude of peasant blood."

Regina shivered, preparing for the absolute worst and readying for either the physical or mental blow. She would rather have her mother strike her, she would choose a bruise over the stinging truths that lingered and leeched into the thoughts of her waking hours.

"Dismiss Aida, we have no need for useless things."

Regina snapped her gaze up to meet her mother's and wanted to once again succumb to the overbearing building pressure of tears in her eyes. "I… She's my…" She couldn't cry, she was already so weak-willed in her mother's eyes.

She just couldn't.

"She's only a servant and not worth your emotions or time, do as I ask." There's nothing in Cora's existence that suggested she would ever be 'asking' and with her gloved hand set on the back of Regina's neck she steered her daughter into position.

Queen and princess stood above the drenched and shivering help. There's something deeply wrong about all of this that sat wrong in her tiny body but the fear Cora instilled was all consuming. Regina was quivering with each second she delayed the demand since she knew her stalling action resulted in Cora's mounting anger. It wasn't the help's mistake but her hands were tied and so was Aida's fate.

Regina doesn't want to remember the times Aida had saved her from Cora's calloused remarks, had protected her and shown her precious moments of kindness. Aida took her off hours to teach Regina how to bake and cook. Simple little things that a family could partake in, tasks that a mother should do were taken up by the remarkable friend before her. She tried to tell herself that she won't miss it, won't yearn for the gentleness that her own mother was rare to offer her.

"You've been," Regina felt herself flinch as she delivered her pre chosen verdict but Cora's tightening clasped refocused her intended words, "relieved of your position."

The moment the words left her mouth it felt as if a vacuumed ripped through the space in her chest, the air evaporated and left her tongue too dried to protest. There was no going back from this and it was her lacking control that caused this lost.

There was no turning back, there was no turning back, there was no turning back.

The scene felt unreal, unfair and plotted as if for a particularly tragic stage performance. There was something unrealistic of what was happening and she slotted her wrists into the strings that tighten and cut into her skin and became the puppet she was meant to play. She convinced herself that she hated the dried texture of Aida's overworked hands and reminded herself how the comforting hugs always stank of dew and sweat from cheap detergents and hard labour. Those were the things she should abhor and she felt the suffocating isolation abate and loose reach of her when she accepted her role.

She realized too late that she must have been displaying quite a frightening expression since Aida appeared horror stricken at her transformation… or was that heart break on the woman's face? It's hard to tell what was real.

"Good girl," Cora cupped Regina under her chin and tilted her daughter to face up, "my good girl, go in and tend to your clothes, I'll have no patience for sickness."

Regina does not look back as Cora discussed Aida's terms of resignation. No one left their castle without scars of some form and Aida would be charred with magic to ensure secrecy of the things she had witness, of the powers that Cora held. All serving class were already seared with Cora's mark, the Queen needed only to activate the magic instilled in the endless, changing flow of her serving bodies.

When Regina was quarantined back into the solitude of her bedroom she glanced outside to the ghosting away rainbow, it's another beat of Galen's wings before the once startling colours faded into nothingness. Galen had reverted to her hummingbird shape but was unusually silent.

Neither commented on how it felt as if the rainbow had never even formed in the first place.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma's Daemon is too big for everything. He sits as a proud lion cub or an equally colossal canine of a breed she can't recognize. His teeth are too long and sharp. When he plays with the other Daemons there's always a kid that complains about harsh but small nicks.

He speaks funny too and she can't quite get him to stop. They both agree that they prefer how fancy he sounds but it draws the wrong kind of attention.

He's just too big for everything.

Orphaned kids like her are assumed to have beetles, frogs, and rabbits. If it was any other kind of animal it was meant to be small and conventionally handheld. It's not a law written anywhere in their code of conduct but it was an unspoken expectation. Their Daemons aren't settled but they know to take the shape of miniscule things so they wouldn't get in the way. There is only a limited amount of room in this facility. Thankfully, it's actually quite new compared to the other places they could've wound up in; this building was not a day over half a decade. There's not enough space for everyone and 'wouldn't they like to help make sure everyone could have a roof over their heads'.

Emma was used to everyone accidentally walking into Griffon. Some recently orphaned additions still shake and shy away from those careless mishaps of impolite contact. It's the worst possible offence to touch another's demon but when the space is so limited, people adapt, the kids dampen the immediate recoil. Everyone just blanks when the indiscretion occurs, a strangled queerness caught in their hearts for a stalling frozen moment…and then everything continues like a stale breath of air forced from stalled and tight lungs. They learn to stomach the unsettling that quivers from their souls to their body, they learn to live around the misgivings and to swallow down the anxieties.

Griffon gets bumped into the most and she can't blame anyone but themselves for choosing such ginormous forms. Emma's the best at pretending that it doesn't feel like ice is getting shanked into her skin every time someone touches Griffon. Everyone pretends; that's how they stay seemingly normal because normal translates into a stint from the orphanage that last more than a month. Normal is what big hearted; sparkling new families want to collect. People want that gold star, that physical manifestation of the self-induced handicap to display their generosity but will not humour misconduct from their little puppet. Their munificence would only go so far in the form of material gifts and a single bedroom for their new trophy.

Some really do want to help but there's so many of privilege households that shop in this place of delinquents just to be a martyr, they want all their friends to know how they've chosen to endure for a better future of those fortunate few. No one wants a short leave of absence, this was the most important competition and the prize was the _normal life_, whatever that may be.

There are studies that claim children from these kiddiemills are all little sociopaths, that they have issues connecting to others or even producing proper responses when their Daemon's are caressed by an experimenter. The children volunteer for these thesis papers writing graduates, they know that they can't all win a family but they'll take the vacation from the institution and the treats that come with the testing.

They aren't expected to display their Daemon's preferred form until an open adoption day; when the punctilious adults show extra fondness towards damage kids with distinguish Daemons. Though by the time a kid can be adopted their Daemon has been trained too well to be petite and unassuming that they can't quite manage to maintain larger size for long. It feels like their Daemon was shoved into bulky mascot costumes, nothing moves right and there's inelegance to their stumbling. The ones that have been in the mill for too long tend to have something submissive in most of the shapes taken by their Daemons but there's also a cunningness to them. Miniature foxes are commonly found slinking by their kid's sides and so are hovering insectoids and of course glassy eyed herpetofauna.

There's something special about Griffon though, with the way his thick lion paws pad as if he's royalty. The scientists are especially fond of his canine form; they want to document his species and often invite Emma to their laboratories. Nothing ever out of the ordinary occurs there, they prod and poke her and then repeat the process on Griffon so that it's 'fair'. They ask her if he's ever close to being settled between the two shapes and when she says 'no' they look relieved.

She hears that it's because they've still have time with her and she assumes it's because she still was still valued.

…

"You missed another adoption day." Her assigned bed partner comments when Emma returns with a sweet treat hidden in her sleeve.

"Yeah." Emma answers back and drops onto their shared bed with an ommf, Griffon jumps onto the squeaky bed as well and makes the rusted springs groan with high pitched protestation.

"Not everyone is stupid enough not to change their Daemon to the right shape," the girl stretches her leg out and connects with Griffon's ribs to knock him onto the floor.

Emma cringes horribly but hides her expression by throwing her arm carelessly over her eyes. She's too worked up over the disgust from the violating touch to immediately fight back, so she chooses to display nonchalance instead, pretending that her bed mate had not just damaged an essential part of her.

Griffon drops onto his hind legs and then swipes his forepaw into the girl's scuttling albino squirrel. It's a fair bit of chasing before Griffon can slap his paw into the rodent. There's a wail of screeches before he flicks his paw so that the tiny thing bounces off of Emma's arm.

"Dirty trick, blacktop." The other girl winces and backs away, her Daemon darting back then clinging onto her shoulder with red eyes that promised taunts and menace.

"I abhor it when they refer to you as such," Griffon states once the girl was gone, hopping back onto the bed and purring when Emma clutches her arms around her friend, "it's infuriating."

"Well that's what happens when you tell one person that you were found on the side of the road and then that asshole goes about telling every idiot that lives here."

"There's no need for profanities."

"Fuck." Emma squeaks into Griffon's mane.

"Honestly." He exasperatedly starts to flick his tail.

"Say a swear," Emma jibes, raising her head up and leaning up to whisper to her companion's fluffy ears, "just one."

"Fornication." He supplies and then slurps his tongue against Emma's cheek, the spiny papialle scratching her cheek.

"Gross!"

"Which? The word or my cleaning of your filthy face, you look like an urchin and if we don't march ourselves down now we might truly miss the last of the meandering adults."

"I don't need to be adopted; they want me at the lab."

Griffon's eyes darken with annoyance and glares down at his Emma. When he flops onto his side, his intentionally allows his shoulder to dig into Emma's chest. He doesn't like the lab and neither does Emma but they hadn't been such a desirable commodity since… well, their entire life. He may sound like an English teacher about to pop a quiz on his students but he was still just a kid.

They were both children and they craved for the attention and care.

…...

This was the first time they've been in this room, in the center sits a solid dull metal framed box, its sides are made of mesh and wire. It would be ominous looking if Emma hadn't spent so much time with similar machinery, for all she could tell it may be a director chosen decorative piece.

They are alone with the skinniest experimenter they've ever seen with skin that reminded Emma of plasticine clay. His body is gaunt and it appears as if nature ran low on materials as he was being formed in the womb. The skin around his face sunk in not because of malnutrition but due to the jagged sharpness of his cheek bones. His balding head shined with oil and odd bumps of loose flabby flesh jaunts out to accommodate for the awkward shape of his skull. His breath stank of nicotine and drink which oozed from a weak mouth that hung perpetually open. He was a shrewd thing and silent as he observed Emma.

He doesn't smile and doesn't act as the other adults do. The Daemon he has functions much in the same manner, its eyes are beady and was quick to spear Griffon with its beak when they respond too sluggishly to the routine questioning.

The most unremarkable thing about him was his hands; the skin there was paler than the rest of his limbs, evidence of the gloves that must be constantly worn by those in his particular department in this facility. The job and all it detailed had caused quite a few to always don the barriers between them and the Daemons they must test, a protective technique against the taboo of touch. It's an oddity that no longer causes for curiosity from Emma and Griffon but there was just something about the experimenter that made them think of sickly things.

During a lull in the inspection, Emma moves her new lollipop to one side of her cheek and then slyly suggests to Griffon, "You can swat at his legs and they'll break."

"I could." Griffon eyes the other Daemon's scaled stalks for feet with a thin calculating gaze.

Their scheming is cut short by the nameless experimenter, "you're very special."

"Oh, yeah, everyone keeps telling-"

"Not," he interrupts and the way he pronounces the 't' causes spit to hit Emma's cheek, "you're just a girl, an abandoned leech."

Emma's eyes are wide as she straightens in the light blue plastic chair while Griffon snarls at the approaching Tricolored Heron.

"Silence," the man shoots out his hand and grasps Griffon by the scuff of its neck, "you didn't think we would notice? Did you think that I would be as blind as my colleagues?"

The man's hands tighten, the weight of his strength pressing down on Griffon and transferring onto her.

"What!?" Emma plummets from her seat and jarringly rams her knees into the ground. This was more than she had ever endured; this went beyond lifeless medical instruments and brief breaching taboos. She spat out the gleaming sugary treat and pressed her numbed tongue to the roof of her mouth.

"I was waiting for the tranquilizer to kick in," he shakes his arm back and forth, swaying the large Daemon like a pendulum, "You parade it all around but I see it now and it's going to be mine."

"Stop it, you're hurting us," Emma was in a fetal position, curled around herself with her hands behind her head and her nails digging into the invisible pressure choking at the back of her neck, "stop it, stop it!"

The man hoists Griffon into his lap, laying the Daemon onto its back. Griffon stretches his paws, claws out but the man knows how to handle an overgrown feline. His fingers rip into Griffon's neck, pinching at the nerves and making the creature weak. He pushes the palm of his free and gloveless hand onto the creature's chest, his fingers caresses the crest of fur, grips it tight and yanks "give it to me now and I won't be forced to utilize intercision, do you know what that is you stupid girl."

"No, stop, you're hurting him!" Emma struggles against the splintering pain that shockwave's from her neck to her spine. She staggers onto her hands and knees and that's when his foot jams into her sides and knocks her back onto the linoleum.

"They nicknamed the machine The Silver Guillotine." He explains as he releases Griffon into one side of the wire meshed frame, he's gentle with the Daemon in a dangerously calm manner.

When he picks up Emma afterwards he carelessly tosses her into the other side of the wires, "change of plans, I don't intend to wait for you to come up with some time wasting and senseless excuse, we're going to cut."

…

Emma wakes up in the hallway with cracked lips and her tongue bloated and fuzzy in her mouth Griffon's maw is full of feathers and there's a piercing wound on his shoulder that looks clotted. It hurts for Emma to roll her left shoulder.

There are a number of medical staff members hovering over the pair of them. They check her over and coarsely but efficiently handle's Griffon's ailments.

This would be their last visit, Griffon has settled into a form and they don't want her anymore.

She's too old to be picked up by a respectable home at this point and her marred record was about to progressively get worse.


End file.
